Telos 207 is being released today on the 20th anniversary of the death of Paul Piccone, founding editor of Telos. This issue on politics and the university features a special section on “Contemporary American Academe before and after October 7, 2023,” edited by Gabriel Noah Brahm and sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute as part of its initiative on Reckoning with October 7: Israel, Hamas, and the Problem of Critical Theory. Responding to the shock of how our academic institutions have become complicit in justifications of terrorism, the Institute’s monthly webinar on the topic has gained considerable attention. In fact, Brahm was recently approached on the street by a stranger who recognized him from the webinar and said, “I watch you and just have one question: who is Paul Piccone?”

What an excellent question.

Having established Telos in May 1968, Piccone remains to this day the primary intellectual inspiration and moral force behind the work that both the Telos journal and the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute pursue today and the unique position they continue to occupy within yet in conflict with academia. The essays in Telos 207 are indeed a tribute to his legacy.

While his work on Telos prioritized ideas as the main movers of history, the main achievement of the journal was to maintain a moral-political sensibility to challenge current academic ideas and investigate new ones that might shed light on existing problems. Throughout his career, both as an academic and then later on outside of formal academic institutions as the editor of Telos, Piccone directed much of his attention to the ways in which ideas are exploited by university academics for career goals rather than revised according to the changing exigencies of that moral-political sensibility. For him, institutionalization of bad ideas could only be opposed through a continual and unflinching criticism of such ideas, wherever such criticism might lead. Such continual re-invention was a hallmark of Telos, but it also made it difficult to classify Telos within a specific school of thought that could be effectively marketed.

Telos then and now remains heterodox in ever-new ways. But in a situation in which our academic institutions are losing legitimacy precisely because of how ideology has triumphed over ideas and critique has become cant, Telos remains committed to the challenge of renewing our institutions by criticizing their foundations. Telos 207 represents a further step in a series of issues (including Telos 81, Telos 111, and Telos 200) that critically examine our colleges and universities. We hope that Paul Piccone would be proud of our efforts. Though he continues to inspire us with his spirit, we all miss his exuberant and ineffable life.